


Midday Moon

by TrickyBunny



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Child from the Future, Gen, Time Travel Makes Everything Worse, cute fluff and stuff, this was supposed to be cute and simple but it might get angsty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrickyBunny/pseuds/TrickyBunny
Summary: You came to my arms too goddamn soon





	1. A Form Without Reflection

Dorian Pavus did not wonder why no one in Redcliffe ever entered the Chantry. Even without the pulsating warp in the fabric of the universe spitting out demons every so often, he could think of a thousand reasons the mages overrunning the village would have no use for the building. Most of the reasons involved some kind of hatred of the Maker for allowing them to be born a mage in the South, spurred on by Alexius' words to take them more easily under his "protection."

Until the tear appeared though, it seemed strange that not at least one mage had come in to knock over some candles or desecrate the altar. That, Dorian knew, had to be Felix's work. Convincing an angry mage to use their anger productively, somewhere on the other side of town perchance thank you, was child's work compared to the feats of verbal acrobatics needed to escape from the arm of Alexius or the gaze of Fiona.

Battering demons provided a good outlet for his own building aggression and imminent boredom as well. Sure he was just shy of a fortnight in and had already discovered the rift's rhythm of storm and calm, how to disrupt said rhythm, and where most demons liked being smacked with a staff the least, but there was certainly more experimentation by trial and error to be had. It would take at least another week of fight demon-speak to Felix-eat-fight demon-sleep-repeat for him to grow bored enough to attempt fitting the demons into lovely little dresses and teaching them the first act of some obscure Antivan opera.

Even Felix couldn't get a chance every day to see him, and it wasn't usually for long enough to have a decent conversation. Everything seemed a twisted echo of his days apprenticing. Or maybe that was just the timeline getting flitted up. Or his loneliness digging through the archives of his memory to find voices for him to listen to.

His loneliness would do well to stay away from certain memories, lest that demon-opera become the more pleasant option.

If all went well, the Herald of Andraste would be arriving in Redcliffe before the first dress was sewn.

As if to laugh at his thought of hopefulness, the rift gurgled. Strange. Magic flared in his hands as his brows furrowed. He glanced toward the window, where sunlight slipped lazily through. By his estimation, which was to say, definitely, the rift shouldn't have been showing activity until well after sundown. It made a sound like a dragon coughing and spilled Fade essence through the air.

Dorian stood ready, partially concealed behind one of the walls near the entryway.

A moment passed. Silent and still. And another.

Dorian began counting breaths.

Three, four - the rift shuddered and split and groaned with a strange echo. An image flashed across its surface. Ancient towering spires, crumbling walls held together with magic. He recognized Minrathous with even just the instant allowed. Another echo, a dog snarling? More than one, it sounded like. Or one, several times. He hardly had time to form the beginning of speculation as to the meaning of it all when the rift swirled and hummed and pulled into itself.

A blob-shape, Fade-green and steaming, shot forth across the chantry, crashing into the wall farthest from him, shattering the table, and choking out the candles atop it with its sulfuric odor. It crumpled to the floor without even making the attempt to take proper shape. The rift gurgled and shrank closed once more.

Too bright to look directly at, distorted by smoke, the shape bubbled but didn't seem to move. Dorian took a step closer to it. His eyes watered at the scent as much as the effort to keep his eyes on it. The glow faded too slowly. Another step. He considered that now might be a more proper time to begin counting breaths. The blob didn't move. The rift sounded like it was a thousand miles away. A demon would have taken shape by then, right?

He stopped a staff's length from it. No spaces of time distortion had appeared alongside the disruption. No bubbles of spiking activity to dispel.

No attack.

As a rule, Dorian did not squat. It was far too unpleasant of a word. But kneeling had the habit of not allowing for a quick enough retreat should the need arise. He wanted a closer look though. The shape was oblong, maybe half his height, and had evened out into a greyish-green with a slick sheen. Some sort of demon splat? A cocoon? Or an egg? He leaned down onto one knee.

The shape responded to being poked at with the staff by continuing to remain motionless. Motionless, but not silent. A strange sound, something like a choked cry came from the far end, muffled. He poked at it again, closer to the end the sound came from, his hands and arms distressingly close to the form. No heat rose from it, the smoke had all dissipated. No tendrils or jaws burst forth to grab him.

The shape twisted around, wrinkling and folding about a foot from the end, in response that time. Another sound. A gasp? A cough?

A kind of covering then, he realised. The shape was not a creature, but a creature was within the shape.

He should bash it then, until it no longer moved, and then open it to see -

It burst into blue veilfire.

He recoiled in surprise, even after his senses assured him he was safe.

The creature within stretched and rolled. The shiny covering thinned out along with it and became translucent. Person-shaped. From where he stood, Dorian could see an arm and a leg. Vanishing into the veilfire, the covering tore and peeled and fell away as a figure struggled to sort out their tangle of arms and legs. It leaned onto its shins, hunched over and holding its arms close. He felt eyes on him even before the veifire cleared to reveal nubbed horns and pointed ears and deep grey skin. Even on the ground, he could tell the stranger was too small to be an adult qunari. Their face remained trained on him, dark eyes reflecting the remains of dancing flames.

"Papa?"

The voice came from the qunari.

Dorian didn't find himself at a loss for words. If anything, he could think of too many. Most of them were various Tevene curses and several different ways to state his need for a drink.

Without consent from his brain, his mouth said, "Come again?"


	2. Fleeting Fits of Reason

The qunari pushed up to stand on shaking legs. They stumbled and leaned against the wall behind them, keeping wide eyes on Dorian the whole time. For his part, Dorian stared as well.

He knew he wasn't dreaming. And only certain, powerful demons could take a knowable shape without possessing someone. Rifts, though. Rifts spat them out and twisted them even beyond their usual incomprehension. Felix had informed him of a Pride demon forced through somewhere outside the walls of Redcliffe. It had displayed as a giant, thorn covered beast incapable of speech or reason. A shadow of what it could have been - the pride of raw power and nothing more.

Dorian had met a proper Pride demon only once. A dream of a masquerade. He had seen an elven woman, the only other there bare-faced, ancient and eternal with black hair flowing forever and eyes burning a silver too intense. A ghost of what his people had stolen, he'd reasoned. They had spoken at length before it tried to possess him.

Armed with this knowledge, he was sure the being before him was not a demon.

Gulping in air by the lungful, the qunari managed to speak again. "You... you are Dorian Pavus, right?"

Dorian narrowed his eyes. Even if this wasn't a demon, they were still a qunari. An enemy by blood. But their clothing, though strange, was recognizable from the complexity and clasp-work as being a Tevinter style, and Dorian had yet to meet a qunari spy stupid enough to try such a disguise. They still cradled one arm against their body, whether hurt or hiding a weapon, he was loathe to find out. "I am." He allowed magic to dance in his palm, hiding it from the qunari's view, ready for the rift to burst again or them to lunge for him.

Instead, the qunari let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. Their lips stretched into a smile, and even from where he stood Dorian could see the scars of removed stitching the movement displayed. Their eyes closed in what had to have been misplaced relief. "Please don't be mad at me."

"Why would I..." Dorian replaced the question with a new one, "Who are you?"

"You have to believe me. This will sound crazy I know but you have to believe me. I'm your daughter."

If he had the power, Dorian would have smacked the rift back open and sent her through right then and there and wouldn't have thought of any of this again for as long as he lived. Folding time like paper, as Alexius had done to reach the mages at Redcliffe, was one thing. Stabbing a hole in it and stepping through reeked of implications and consequences he was not prepared to deal with on top of everything else.

"I fucked up. I fucked something up really bad and I don't know what to do. But you're here and you'll know what to do."

"You're right." She looked hopeful for the briefest of moments before he continued. "It does sound crazy." His thoughts raced. How could he possibly ask someone to prove a claim like that? Demanding to know knowledge from the future to prove it would happen, aside from possibly having dire consequences on the timeline itself, seemed something of a foux pas. And he had no way of knowing how much knowledge of the past she was to have anyway. She might be able to tell him what he had for breakfast in two weeks, but that didn't mean she knew what he had eaten yesterday.

At the same time, the timeline was becoming more and more of a timescribble at Redcliffe.

"Why would I ever adopt a child?" Obviously, the most pressing issue of the matter. And as horrifying and hilarious as the thought seemed upon first glance, it rang with a tone of hope. In some future, some time some where, he would find himself capable of caring for another. In some future, he had perhaps moved beyond the reach of the nightmares of his months trapped within the Pavus estate. The thought of a Dorian who could love this qunari before him as he had once thought his father loved him, was both heavy and soft. A far off hope, a goal to achieve. He was prepared to believe it, some small part of him wanting to. With all the strangeness surrounding him, it hardly seemed impossible. And no one would ever expect it from him as he was now, and the sheer absurdness of it was what could convince him more than any fortunetelling.

"You'll know why when it happens. What year is this?"

"9:41 Dragon."

"Okay. Okay." She took to muttering to herself. "Okay. The Inquisition is formed?"

"Yes." Dorian leaned back and crossed his arms. He quirked a brow, curious as to where her line of questioning was headed.

"Have you met..." she glanced at him and then away as she paused. "Um, the Herald yet?"

"No. He should be arriving at Redcliffe soon however."

"Good. Great. Okay you can't let him know I'm here. No matter what he can't know or I'll get grounded for like twenty years."

Dorian laughed out loud before the implication sank in. She was his daughter, allegedly. But the Herald of Andraste would ground her. So much for limiting his foreknowledge. Just to spite that bit of fate he wondered if he would even get along with the Herald now. The tragic flaw of inevitably meeting someone was that before the fact you built them up or down in your mind and they were never what your imagination conjured. And even should the Herald be all he dreamed and more, would his own conviction for throwing fate to the wind make him destroy any bond which might begin between them?

"I can kind of explain. Maybe. I think. I promise. I know you and Dad are worried - if I've actually been gone for any time to you, them - and I have to go back. You know about time travel magic better than anyone. You studied it. I know you did and I found your old research and you can't lie to me again about it because I know it's possible now!"

She tried to wave her hand in a dramatic flair, revealing a tear in the sleeve of the arm she held close and a nasty gash staining the white and gold fabric with blood.

"Alright," Dorian sighed. "Alright I won't lie. You seem too well versed in all my good ones anyway. What happened to your arm?"

She shrugged. "It’s not too bad. Maybe I hit it on whatever I landed on?"

Good to know that hiding important information would run in the family as much as reckless abandon for rules would. He lifted a brow. "The blood's nearly dry. Too dry for that."

She shrugged again. "Does it really matter?"

"Yes." He took a step towards her. "If you don't tell me, I might not heal it for you. And it looks a bit painful to leave open like that."

"You'll know when it happens."

His heart dropped. Was it his fault? Did he do it himself? Or cause it? His mouth was suddenly too dry to ask for clarification. He pulled magic through his fingers and out towards her. Trying to keep his hand steady, he took her arm gently with his other hand and studied her face as she looked down at the energy between them. Black eyes, deep-set above wide, high cheekbones. Her forehead seemed too narrow to support horns the size of a usual qunari's, but hers were stunted somehow anyway, either cut off a few inches from the base and cauterized or hewn off with magic. Other than the scars of a saarebas, she was unmarked. Freckles spattered over the thin arc of her nose and down her narrow chin and across her neck.

She met his eyes, unreadable. "It wasn't you or him. Never."

He didn't realised his brows had been pulled upward and his lips a taut line until his face relaxed. The girl offered a lopsided smile. "Am I allowed to know your name at the least? Or is that another thing I'll learn when it's time?"

"Angel," she said warmly. "You named me Angel."

Dorian almost retched. He considered the ramifications of going forward in time in order to kick his own ass both for lowering himself to a state of such cheese and for subjecting the daughter he supposedly cared for to such a fate.

She giggled and pulled her arm away, flexing the fingers and moving the wrist. "Your hair is so short now. And so...never mind." A repressed snicker.

"It's so what?" He ran a hand over his head, threading through his dark hair. "If you're going to spoil all the secrets of the future please let the state of my hair not be one of them."

She laughed again. She covered her mouth as she did, with both hands so her whole face was obscured. Dorian laughed with her. The rift behind them even got in a few good chuckles before buckling inward and throwing itself wide.

A group of shades bubbled into being, two around Dorian, and a third near Angel. With is shriek of surprise and a wave of her uninjured arm, it froze in place. She dove under the rift itself, to the back of the Chantry where there was more light and open space. The two shades around him hissed and reached out to slice at him. Too close to bother wasting mana, he spun to face the one directly behind him, drawing an arc with his staff to bash it at chest height. The follow through smashed into the second one. He brought the staff down on it again just as the door opened.

His gaze flicked to the altar just in time to see the end of Angel's braid as she slipped behind a statue before turning to the newcomers. A white haired Dalish elf, flanked by the biggest qunari he'd ever seen, a human mage with a fashion sense to rival his own, and a city elf wearing the loudest ensemble in existence. The left hand of the Dalish elf shone bright, pulsating in reaction to the rift.

"Good! You're finally here. Now help me close this, would you?"

Not about to let them go an uneventful second, the rift produced a pair of lesser terrors. Dorian kept an eye out for the statue hiding Angel. A terror screeched and twitched and looked over in that direction. It dropped to all fours, limbs protruding like a spider's and managed only a cursory interest in continuing. Before his own reaction, the Dalish elf smashed his great sword into the terror's back, vivisecting it with a graceful, careless ease before charging into the last remaining enemy. Frozen to the floor, the terror stood no chance, but Dorian felt the urge to panic at the thought of Angel emerging when he saw the wisps of ice darting around the human mage.

The Dalish elf reached for the rift, a beam of green, not quite magic, not just energy, rushing through and between them. Dorian raised a brow in interest as he approached. The glow reflected brightly off the bone white vallaslin. Its shape flowed along the contours of the elf's face, accentuating his eyes and nose and cheekbones more than they already were. "Fascinating. How does that work, exactly?"

The elf was silent, brows furrowed. His lip twitched as though he was about to say something, but Dorian spoke first.

"You don't even know, do you? You just wiggle your fingers, and boom! Rift closes."

"Who are you?" A voice too soft for the accusatory tone.

"Ah, getting ahead of myself again I see." Dorian smirked and bowed. "Dorian of House Pavus, most recently of Minrathous. How do you do?"

The big qunari grunted and rolled his shoulders as if preparing for another fight. "Watch yourself. The pretty ones are always the worst."

"Suspicious friends you have here," he said, turning to face the Herald squarely. Dealing with Angel could wait until the dangerous part of all this timefuckery was safely behind them. "Magister Alexius was once my mentor, so my assistance should be valuable - as I'm sure you can imagine."

"You're the one who sent that note, then?"

"I am. Someone had to warn you, after all." He crossed his arms and shifted onto one foot. "Look, you must know there's danger. That should be obvious even without the note. Let's start with Alexius claiming the allegiance of the mage rebels out from under you. As if by magic, yes? Which is exactly right. To reach Redcliffe before the Inquisition, Alexius distorted time itself."

The Herald glanced at his companions and then back to Dorian. He spoke again with an unsure caution. "He arranged it so he could arrive just after the Divine died?"

"You catch on quick." Dorian quirked a brow and held back a pleased smile.

"Manipulating time itself?" The mage woman spoke with a disbelieving laugh at the edge of her voice. She put her hands on her hips like she was going to scold him for such an accusation. "Many have attempted over the ages but none have ever succeeded."

"The rift you closed here. You saw how it twisted time around itself? Sped some things up and slowed others down. Soon there will be more like it, and they'll appear further and further away from Redcliffe. The magic Alexius is using is wildly unstable. And it's unraveling the world."

"I'd like more proof than magical time control - go with it." The Herald stared hard at the woman with a worried expression. He seemed to be waiting for her assurance that it was impossible. Instead, she turned to Dorian as well, eyes narrowed and arms crossed and hip cocked, but she seemed to be awaiting him to speak nonetheless.

"I know what I'm talking about." He paused, and considered Angel waiting and listening. He had apparently lied to her in the future about time travel magic being more than theory, but with what was going on he could hardly blame himself. "I helped develop this magic. When I was still his apprentice, it was pure theory. Alexius could never get it to work. What I don't understand is why he's doing it? Ripping apart time just to gain a few hundred lackeys?" Maybe Alexius screwing with time was what allowed Angel to come back to this point in the first place. Like a snowball effect. He pressed and pressed and pressed and then eventually someone else curious tried again and the fabric of time had been weakened enough to burst open.

"He didn't to it for them." Felix's voice. He'd entered without any of them noticing, no doubt a skill he'd had to perfect to live with Alexius without going insane for these last few months. The shadows around him made him look too gaunt.

Dorian pushed the thought away. "Took you long enough, is he getting suspicious?"

"No but I shouldn't have played the illness card. I thought he'd be fussing over me all day." He turned to the Herald. "My father's joined a cult. Tevinter supremacists. They call themselves "Venatori." And I can tell you one thing for certain: whatever he's done for them, he's done it to get to you."

"Alexius is your father. Why are you working against him?"

"For the same reason Dorian works against him. I love my father and I love my country. But this? Cults? Time magic? What he's doing now is madness. For his own sake, you have to stop him."

"It would also be nice if he didn't rip a hole in time. There's already a hole in the sky."

The Herald sighed and smirked. "All this for me. And here I didn't get Alexius anything."

Dorian matched the expression. "Send him a fruit basket. Everyone loves those. You know you're his target. Expecting the trap is the first step in turning it to your advantage. I can't stay in Redcliffe. Alexius doesn't know I'm here and I want to keep it that way for now. But whenever you're ready to deal with him, I want to be there." He turned and hoped no one would try to follow him to the back of the Chantry. "I'll be in touch. Oh, and Felix?" Maker, Felix would be able to help with Angel. He could be trusted, he was resourceful. The thought flitted about his head, shadowed only by the thought of what Alexius would do to all three of them should he discover her. "Try not to get yourself killed."

"There are worse things than dying, Dorian."

Shuffling feet, the door opening and closing a few times. Dorian could hear Angel breathing just a little ways off, crouched among the shadows. They both waited in silence until all other noise had faded from even the outside.

"Papa!" She leapt for him before he had the chance to give her the all-clear. "Was this the first time you met Dad? Did you see how huge his sword was?! I heard the stories but I didn't think he could do that thing with the rifts like that!"

Dorian choked back a response about certain comparisons to swords that could have been made. He pulled her arms from around his neck. "He was," a word, a suitable word, a suitable appropriate word. "Impressive to see. We'll have to get out of Redcliffe though, I meant it when I said it. Especially since you could be in danger here too. If Alexius discovers whatever it is that you have..."

"I'm not afraid of him!"

If not so concerned for the lives of everyone around them and her own, he would have commended her bravery. If he was sure she was an accomplished fighter and mage who could hold her own in a fight he would have spun some story for her being with him and marched into Haven to lead the charge right then and there. He supposed it might be easier to hide her in Haven, pass her off as a pilgrim if anyone found her or thought to ask.

They needed to leave, to go somewhere at all, and it needed to be soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I actually wrote this chapter for the first day of NaNo, but didn't get to finish it until now.  
> As for Angel's name, I mostly knew I wanted something kind of cheesy and stupid, but there's not really any "angels" in any Thedosan religions that I can tell. But angels are a suit of cards used in Wicked Grace. It gets kind of muddy and unclear about whether or not it could be plausible. My excuse is based on a discussion either on anti-shurtugal or impish idea which took place at some point about how fantasy stories, within the universe they are written in would be told in and characters would have names in whatever language they are actually speaking. The written version the reader reads could be considered to be translated into, in this case for example, English. It was a sort of theory as to why one might be able to find certain anachronistic type phrases (like "okay") or English word names (like "Lucky" or "Blue") in stories and excuse them. Angel isn't named "Angel", but some Thedosan or Tevene word which could be translated as Angel. Another translation might be "Faith" or even "Prophet".
> 
> EDIT: TWO DAYS LATER I REALISE HE WOULDN'T EVEN BE "INQUISITOR" YET OTL

**Author's Note:**

> So I made a new Inquisitor to romance Cassandra with and he was an elf. But then I realised I would really rather be playing a qunari again because qunari are the best. So I was left with this devastatingly handsome boy who I decided would be a good match for Dorian probably. Then this idea came along based on a prompt I came across somewhere. The start is kind of short, sorry. I was going to post it once I actually had more done but eeeehhh. Every idea is a great idea at 3am.


End file.
